


Archimeda's Lost Archives

by jackonhighheels



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-01-25 13:52:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18575803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackonhighheels/pseuds/jackonhighheels
Summary: “I got this craving all of a sudden and then realized, we can travel trough time and space. We’ve been on an alien planet! More than once. A trip to New York is nothing.”With course set, Doctor does her best to ignore the pit of anxiety forming in her stomach. New York (Manhattan, even) is nothing more than a point in space, after all.





	1. I'd give anything to hear/You say it one more time

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter title from Saturn - Sleeping At Last.
> 
> I'd love to hear what you think!

It starts with a bouquet of roses, an abandoned library and a phone call. 

It ends with desperate cries for help from behind a locked door.

And none of it would even happen if Ryan Sinclair didn’t insist on stopping for a cuppa. A little coffee shop on Franklin Ave, Brooklyn (such a simple idea that changes everything). He comes around and says: “I got this craving all of a sudden and then realized, we can travel trough time _and_ space. We’ve been on an alien planet! More than once. A trip to New York is nothing.”

Without waiting for Doctor to answer, Yaz grins widely, almost jumping with excitement. “Oh I always wanted to see the city.”

“Take a walk in Central Park!”

“Climb the Empire State Building!”

“A quick look at the Rockefeller Center…”

“… see a show on Broadway, maybe?”

“All in time before the dinner, right, Doctor?”

But the Doctor doesn’t listen. New York. She remembers Manhattan, of course, remembers the grief, the anger that threatened to rip her apart. The horrible feeling of helplessness weighing her down (even now) — for there was nothing the Doctor could do to save his Ponds. Oh, _Amy._ She remembers the rage. Remembers herself — a broken lost old man taking everything in his reach to smash it, crush it, destroy it in any way possible, because how could anything ever be whole again after loosing Amy and Rory. Last, never least, she remembers River saying: “Don’t travel alone, Doctor.”

So many of them lost. For a moment, the pain seems unbearable.

“Doctor?”

She looks up. Ryan, puzzled with her silence, is frowning a little, head to the side. Yaz, beautiful and smart Yasmine Khan, taking a step forward with worry written all over her face.

Just like that, it hurts a little less.

Then Graham pops his greying head through the door and hollers: “What are we doing today, gang?”

The Doctor smiles. “Coffee? Love it. Trip to New York it is, Ryan.”

She rushes off to the controls and pokes and pulls and pushes. With course set, Doctor does her best to ignore the pit of anxiety forming in her stomach. New York (Manhattan, even) is nothing more than a point in space, after all.

***

The café is small and packed with what looks like university students drinking much more caffeine that is advisable. Graham finds a table in the back and waves them over. They order (latte, two cappuccinos and one espresso). Ryan tells them about a trip he took to New York with his mates couple years before. Yaz rambles about the quality of the coffee they are drinking, Graham chiming in every now and then. Doctor tries to listen in on the conversation and fails, mind lost in a haze she cannot seem to shake. The walls are closing in on her. It gets harder to breathe with every minute that passes. This is the place where Rory and Amy grew old together in a time beyond Doctor’s reach.

“… so it comes down to the beans themselves…”

Every sound around them suddenly seems very loud, like it’s trying to make it harder on the Doctor to hear Yaz talk. Rustling of papers, a phone ringing, people sipping on their coffees, shuffling of legs and arms, _click click_ ing of high heels, the phone that no-one seems to care to answer, hushed voices and nail bitting and pen scratching and heavy breathing and the phone, _why will nobody pick up the phone_?

“Is there a doctor here? I’m sorry to bother, but could a doctor come here for a minute?” the waitress calls out. She has a pretty hair, Doctor notices, a red lipstick and a telephone to her ear. “Doctor?”

Yaz exchanges a pointed look with Graham. “Do you know who that might be?”

“I don’t know,” Doctor says.

“Well, go on, then. Find out,” Ryan leans forward and gestures to the waitress. “She ain’t gonna wait forever.”

It feels surreal, almost. How did they — whoever _they_ is — knew where to find her? Doctor throws an absent smile at the girl behind the counter. Stretches her hand out. “That will be for me. Thank you.”

She doesn’t know what she expects to hear. It certainly isn’t this:

“Hello, sweetie.”

 

“River.” Barely a whisper. 

She thought Darillium would be the last of it (Doctor recalls the time they spent together with unexpected fondness). But then, when was anything ever that simple with River Song.

“Didn’t think you’d show up, my love, though I can’t say I’m complaining.”

There is a noise in the background. Shouting, grunting and was that a gun that just went off?

“Are you fighting?” Doctor frowns. “River. What did you do?”

“I might have stolen a little something.”

Of course she did.

“ _Impossible woman_ ,” Doctor mutters under her breath. She can’t help but think: of all the places their timelines could’ve cross again, why here? Why now? Saying goodbye is so much harder when the person you say it to keeps coming back. Her hearts break a little every time she does, but how could she ever not? There’s no saying when River leaves the Doctor for good.

“What did you steal? A diamond? A heart?” She thinks back to the last time. Parade of husbands. _You cannot expect stars to love you back._

(Her twelfth regeneration asked River, when they could not tiptoe around the question any longer. “Do you really think of me that way?”

“I was only trying to distract them, my dear.”

“With a speech about the husband that never loved you?”

A pause, a smirk. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” He doesn’t push. Much later, he traces the words _wife_ and _always_ in Gallifreyan on her bare skin. River calls him a sentimental old man, but smiles ever so brightly. _Husband,_ she traces back.)

“Why bother with one heart, when I can have two?”

“What then?”

River laughs. “Why don’t you come and see?”

 

“Library. You stole a _library._ ”

River Song swoops in like she always does, with a smoking gun in her hand, bringing up more questions that she cares to answer.

“The _hair_ ,” says Ryan.

“Shush.” River points the gun to her right and shoots without looking. She doesn’t miss. “Love the new face, sweetie. Now, would you be so kind to get us the hell out of here? I cannot hold them much longer.”

There is a small black box in her hand, sticky and red from blood dripping down River’s hand from where a bullet grazed her shoulder.

“Right. Back inside, gang! Fam? Nevermind, go!”

As more and more mercenaries rush into the room, only thing left of Professor Song and the hidden Andromeda archives is the well-known sound of TARDIS fading into background.


	2. I will always hold you close

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With New York reminding her of all the things she had lost, Doctor wishes she could run.

The thing is, every time River shows up at Doctor’s doorstep, it stings a little. All of her: the eyes, the smile, the love she has for everything old and ancient (including the Doctor), the stories she tells — Doctor loves. How could one not, when there is so much to her she at times seems infinite. Yet in the background of every interaction, every touch and kiss and ‘ _hello sweetie_ ’, a memory hangs. It poisons the happiness River so easily induces.

The knowledge of her death — even though River Song died with a husband by her side, she still died alone.

At times Doctor remembers this and _runs_ , makes up a hastily excuse and doesn’t look River in the eyes when he leaves. She never stops him.

Now, with New York reminding her of all the things she had lost, Doctor wishes she could run.

She can’t. River Song sits on a couch in the TARDIS (couch the ship so helpfully provided the moment River set foot inside). Yaz hovers over her, patching her up, relying on what little medical knowledge police training provided her with.

“Let me get this straight,” Grahams regards the box River stole with a great amount of wariness, almost like he’s expecting it to change shape and bite him. “You and Doctor know each other and it’s complicated…” (— Ryan smirks and whispers: “Sure it is.” —) “… and she just happens to call you when she’s in mortal danger because of this… _thing_.”

“Does the Doctor do that a lot? Save you, I mean.” Yaz finishes the last stich and lets out a breath of relief. “All done now.”

“Oh, plenty. And I do the same for the Doctor. I remember this one time when we went on a fishing expedition and though I kept telling him not to sonic the boat, of course he did exactly that…”

“Hush, you,” Doctor frowns and points a finger at River. “It was a perfectly nice trip.”

Her eleventh self picked his wife from Stormcage for a proper honeymoon. Proper second one, anyway. With a new suit and unwavering confidence, he took her for a ride on a boat — the same boat young River dug up during her first ever archiology expedition. If he also happened to be the reason the boat crashed in the first palce — well, that’s time travel for you.

“We almost died.”

To be fair, the alian fish king with a grudge was _mostly_ not Doctor’s fault.

“Don’t we always?”

Until one of us doesn’t make it out alive.

Doctor wonders. Had Amy ever hated him for the death of her daughter? Had Rory? And have they ever cried for the girl they never got to raise and love?

Every breath gets harder to force out and Doctor turns to escape into the entangled corridors of her ship. Very old and (many would say) wise beings deserve a moment of unbearable weakness, too.

Yaz calls after her: “Wait, Doctor! Where are you going?”

She doesn’t stop to answer (though she does notice River’s silence).

 

Graham doesn’t trust _it._

The little black box sits on the table, pretending to be nothing more than an inanimate object. It does not move and does not speak. An unbiased observer might even say it could not possibly be less threathening. Perhaps except the blood it is covered with.

Graham is _very biased_. There is something about that box, he can’t quite put his finger on it. So he makes a point of watching it, no matter what the lady says.

And he will keep watch until Doctor comes back from wherever she ran to. It couldn’t possibly be very far. How big can a spaceship be?

“Crazy old man,” says Ryan and maybe he has a point.

Graham does not move his eyes away.

 

(the odd woman moves around the console like it’s hers)

(if Yaz is being honest, the way River Song seems to simply _belong_ in the TARDIS makes her a little jealous)

“So, when you said a library, you meant…”

Yaz lets the question hang in the air for a little while. When River does not answer, she tries again: “Sorry. What _did_ you mean?”

“My dear, I meant exactly what I said. This,” — River nods in the general direction of the stolen good — “is a complete backup of the biggest databank the universe has ever seen. That is, universe in the fiftieth century. Imagine every information collected, sorted and filed away. The power it yields cannot be possibly calculated. Every bit of knowledge, at your fingertips.”

“Quite literary, it would seem.” Yaz shakes her head. “Why steal it then? What do you want with that information?”

“Nothing at all. I’d actually rather not know everything, when it is so much more fun figuring things out on your own.” She _smirks_. “A question you should be asking is, however, something very different.”

“And what would that be?” — even Ryan stops making fun of Graham’s paranoia and listens.

“Why, of all the time and places, was an object _so_ valuable hidden in 21st century New York?”

Why, indeed. Yaz shoot a concerned look at the cube. “Who were the people trying to kill you?”

“That is what I am trying to find out, dear.”

Silence. Yaz bites down on her lip, quietly hoping for Doctor’s quick return. River pushes a button, smiles and carresses an edge of the console. “Off we go.”

“And where exactly might that be?” Doctor stands, slouching against a door. Her eyes do not meet River’s. She seems… sad, perhaps? Closed off. Yaz fights the urge to hug her.

“To the end, of course,” River says. “I’m going home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay, exams are coming up and I am swamped with work. Thank you all for the amazing comments, they made my day!


	3. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a filler chapter. Hopefully, the plot should kick in the next one!

There is a moment of doubt before the first tentative step. Though she hasn’t been there for ages, this is as close to home as it gets with River. Inside these walls, she has lived a lifetime.

“Home,” says Doctor and shoots River a long look. “Here?”

“Have you expected something else, darling?” River shakes her head and sends the hair flying (“My _god_ ,” Ryan sighs in awe), her eyes lighting up when she smirks: “Of course, you haven’t seen much more than my bedroom, I suppose.”

They’ve never stayed on the campus for long, always in a rush; River pulling him to the TARDIS, eager for adventure, or on the bed, yearning for intimacy.

“My my, Doctor,” Ryan slaps Doctor hard on the back. “And here I thought you were a gentleman.”

“Or is it a gentlewoman?” Yaz frowns.

Graham rushes after the group, the box wrapped up in an old sweater and safely stored away in a backpack he carries. (It cannot be possibly trusted to stay in the TARDIS. All of the knowledge crammed in one box? Surely it knows hot to fly). “I don’t think it matters,” he says. “when she’s been both.”

“Not important,” Doctor shushes them. “Why are we here, River?”

Earlier, when the Doctor stormed off in whatever fit that possesed her, River danced with the TARDIS like only she knew how. “Hello, old friend,” she whispered to the rusted controls and the ship silently greeted her back. On the main screen, it showed her a post reminder in her name, the year she has finished her graduate studies. She doesn’t remember getting a package then. The whole thing looks and quacks like a time travel meddling and with that thought, River checks the gun hanging from her belt and grins wildly. She thrives in chaos and can already feel the adrealine rush coming.

“I have a package to pick up,” she answers.

Doctor makes a noncommital sound and hangs back a little. When River said they were going to ‘the end’, it felt like a wave of cold and dread washing over her until she could not breathe, could not think of nothing but the flash that undid all of her wife, the Library and the metal rubbing her skin raw as she tried to stop River from her suicide mission, doomed to watch her die and not know why.

She looks around for a distraction, hoping for something. An anomaly, a weird detail out of place, anything really. She doesn’t recognize the place, Doctor realizes — hasn’t been here a lot. How ironic for a time traveler, when it would have been so easy to be there for the whole ride. She remembers a University Christmas ball, her Eleventh self hanging in the shadows, watching. _His_ River, already married for the second time, in the arms of another. A pang of jealousy struck him as he stood, seeing her happy without him. (When River turns to look for him in the crowd, the Doctor is already gone).

“So, what’s the history?” Ryan asks in a low voice. “And before you evade the question, I can totally tell there is one, don’t even try to deny it. How do you know each other?”

I watched her die before I knew who she was to me. I fell in love while living backwards, I was the reason for her ruined childhood, the sole reason she was fashioned into a heartless psychopat and killer, I let her rot in prison for years, locked up for a crime she never commited, and in spite of all that, she was willing to destory time itself because she loved me more then I ever deserved to be loved. I’ve neglected and ignored her because of my own guilt until she stopped believing I loved her back. And maybe she never did believe it in the first place. After a moment of silence, Doctor answers: “She died. Then we got married.”

Ryan chokes. Yaz turns around, shakes her finger at them and: “What are you two whispering about? Is it the cube? Do you know something, Doctor?”

“She,” Rayn frantically points at the Doctor, then at River and back again. “ is married to her. Can you believe it?”

“ _No_ ,” Yaz gasps. “No way. Really?”

“Really,” Doctor sighs. There is no ring on River’s finger (she looked, of course she’d looked).

 

River finds it hard to have hope sometimes.

She is dancing at an university ball, the social event of the entire academic body, in the arms of the most handsome man in the room, yet she finds herself thinking of the Doctor, looking for a familiar figure in a crowd. He does not show and River curses herself for thinking otherwise.

She has taken many lovers over the years, most of them as means of passing time between Doctor’s visits. Some of them, she weds. Few of them, she loves.

There are many forms of love, River learns. It would be unfair to say she loves Doctor the most. Her feelings for the Doctor are unlike any other; they could easily be an unmovable object met with unstopable force. They crush and burn and destroy and hurt each other more than anyone else could. Doctor is not an easy being to love, but then again, River has never been an easy woman and perhaps the two of them can fit with each other that way — both alien and human at heart, broken down with sharp edges they are not quite sure how to smoothe.

Their tangled timelines do not make it any easier — they apologize before any wrongs occur and never when it’s needed. Always suffering out of turn.

At times (coming home after hours spent in the library, pouring over every dusty old historian text she could get her hands on, lying in bed exhausted, yet unable to find sleep), she finds it hard to know the Doctor loves her too.

She wears the simple titanium band tied on a string around her neck and rarely looks at it. In the apartment, there is a photo of Rory and Amy and Mel, smiling in the picture. Family gained, family lost. River evades the picture like a plague. Never acknowledges its presence.

(At times) River wishes for a happy ending, then tries to forget she ever felt that low.

 

“How does it work? You said she died and _then_ you got married. Is she dead right now?”

Doctor should have really seen the questions coming.

“When you said complicated,” Yaz says. “I thought you meant _normal_ complicated. Not a dead wife with a gun.”

“To be fair,” Doctor watches River, few steps ahead of them, chatting with Graham. “I was not expecting the call. The last time we saw each other… I thought it would be the last time.”

“Why?”

Because Dallirium was supposed to be _it._ The end of them. Twelve gave River the one thing Eleven never could — time. And when River kissed him goodbye and headed for the Library, when they both knew that was it, it felt final. Like a much needed closure.

Yet, time has never been that linear, not for them. She should have known.

“Don’t say anything to River,” Doctor says instead of answering. “We haven’t compared diaries, I have know idea when this is for her.” She observes — this River is definitely _hers_ , after the wedding, after Stormcage. Did Pandorica already happen? Did New York? (The absence of the ring bothers her more than she is willing to admit).

“Time diaries?”

“My, two time travellers in one relationship really make a mess of the situation, don’t they?”

 

“Here,” River dangles a set of keys before Doctor’s face. “You know where I live.”

“I thought we were going to pick up a package for you,” Yaz argues, obviously hoping to see more of the campus, but River shakes her head with: “I don’t want to be seen. Much easier to hide if I go alone.”

“You,” she says to the Doctor. “Do not meddle. Go to my place. Stay there. There is already too many time anomalies in this place, I don’t want you adding up to it.”

“Sure,” Doctor shrugs. River frowns. They stare at each other for a while, silent. River pushes: “I mean it, Doctor. This is a _peculiar_ time.”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you.”

With a wink and smile, River turns on a heel and they quickly loose sight of her in the crowd.

“And now,” Doctor fiddles with the keys in her hands, seemingly deciding on something; then shoves them in her pocket and offers a wide grin. “Who wants to explore?”


End file.
